Features

I walked with the zombies

Swarms run from the undead and into a nationwide trend. Why?

Play of the dead: “Zombie runs are an extension of interactive theatre” (Leon Neal)

Some idiot rattled the gate, attractingthe zombies’ senseless anger, so I
burrowed under the chain-link fence while they were distracted, zigzagging
with ease past some slow-moving monsters. Turning the corner, I realised my
mistake and stopped dead — ahead of me, a sea of fast-moving undead clocked
my presence, like velociraptors, and started sprinting towards me. I ran
faster than I had since the school playground, aiming for the sanctuary of
the barbed wire. Not for the first time, I deeply regretted spending a
Saturday night in Cardiff.

“Zombies come with a dual expectation: camp and shock. We won’t let you down
on those,” Simon Johnson had told me earlier. Johnson is from the
Bristol-based “pervasive games” company Slingshot, the creators of 2.8 Hours
Later, the game I was playing. We were squatting in a warehouse near Cardiff
City’s stadium; behind us, hundreds of people filed through their pre-run
briefing. We